Stayin’ alive: Newt notches needed win in Georgia

The good news for Newt backers: They will have a candidate to protect.

Gingrich’s campaign lives to fight another day after he captured a must-win victory in Georgia, the state he represented in Congress for 20 years. When the election was all said and done, Gingrich had 47 percent of the vote, far ahead of runners-up Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.

The former House speaker had pledged to drop out of the presidential race if he couldn’t carry Georgia. Gingrich told cheering supporters in Atlanta that he had been buried prematurely by the political elites, but presidential scholars say his campaign is barely alive.

“His victory keeps him alive, but that’s all,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor at American University. “Unfortunately for Gingrich, his victory in Georgia doesn’t mean very much. It was expected that he’d win because it’s his home state, so the other candidates conceded.”

Gingrich vowed to fight on in upcoming contests in the Deep South states of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as in the heartland state of Kansas.

“If he can win some of the southern states, that could be a positive thing,” Lawless said.

She stressed that the race is still very open, and that it’ll remain so even after the delegates from the Super Tuesday primaries have been allocated.

“Even after tonight no candidate will have a sufficient number of delegates, so every candidate has an incentive to stay in the race as long as he can afford. We’ve seen the candidates rise and fall during the last six months, so no one know what the race will look like in a few weeks,” the professor said.

Trailing behind Gingrich in Georgia were Mitt Romney with 26 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum with 20 percent of the vote, and Ron Paul with 6 percent of the vote.

Ninety-four percent of those voting were Caucasian.

The highest age for voter turnout in Georgia was 45-64 years old at 49 percent, followed by the 65+ age group with 25 percent, then the 30-44 year olds with 18 percent and then the 18-29 year olds with a mere eight percent.

Mike Huckabee won the 2008 Georgia primaries on the February 5, 2008 (Super Tuesday) with 33.9 percent of the vote, but dropped out less than a month later on March 4 after losing the Texas primary to John McCain.